Creating the Perfect "Harry Potter" Magic School Party

My oldest daughter turns eleven on Sunday. If we lived in England, she'd be getting her letter to Hogwart's about now. But, alas, we live in Arizona, USA. Then, of course, there is the fact that we have chosen homeschooling, Radical Unschooling to be precise, as the form of education in our household... Still, the magic siren has been calling to us. Our solution? A "Welcome to Magic School" party.

Ingredients for this MAGIC SCHOOL party:

• Money from Gringott's (this site has lots of high quality Harry Potter merchandise)
• Yummy candy to sell to the arriving students -- most purchased from Vegan Essentials
• Plenty of new wizards and witches to invite
• Parent/Grandparent/Older Sibling Professors (we couldn't do this without them!)
• Magic Wands and a couple of Alivan's magic wands
  
• One good sorting hat (these say suede, but it is a polyester faux vegan suede)
• Spells for all the magic we are planning
  
• Enough materials for at least seven classes
• Good imaginations

Directions: Mix together and have fun.

A few of our specific classes (with notes on the magic behind the magic):
Care of Magical Creatures -- Glow in the Dark Squidies
Transfigurations -- three forms of magical paper 1, 2, 3
Charms -- buzz magnets, water suspension magic, and static lights
Potions -- Making slime and worms
Herbology -- Planting magical plants
Divination -- tea leaf reading, crystal ball reading, magic fish
Defense Against the Dark Arts -- Making air blasters to defend against dark creatures

Our Vegan Feast includes:
NOTE: Cynthia from Friendly Feast created the menu and all recipes are hers (thus we can't share them).

• Hagrid's Special Birthday Cake
• Three Broomsticks Inn Butterbeer
• Hogwart's Express Iced Pumpkin Juice
• Quidditch Player Shepherd's Pie
• Mrs. Weasley's Home-Baked Mini Pumpkin Pies
• Kreacher's Treacle Tartlets
• Cauldron Cakes
• Canary Creams
• Honeydukes Sweet Shop Chocolate Fudge

And, of course, we have a few more magical surprises up our sleeves...
We can't tell you everything, or the magic would be gone.

Audible Books and iPods

My Unschooled daughters and I have become enamored with audio books. On a recent trip, we knew we had to finish listening to the last Harry Potter book (our consensus is that it is the best one of the bunch). Thus, we started looking into MP3 players.

Our criteria were (1) SUPER SMALL and (2) easy to use. Thus, the purchase of our iPod Shuffle version 2. We started with only two and now have three. These have become excellent purchases and we're zipping through books as we go about our daily lives. It is wonderful to be doing the dishes while listening to a book! I'd so frequently had to put my book down in order to do laundry. Not now. :) With the iPods, the best source of instant audio books out there is by far Audible.com. (Thanks to my friend, Andrew, for that recommendation). Not only is their product easy to understand and use, but their customer support is excellent. I highly recommend them, despite the fact that they won't allow Do Life Right, Inc. to be an affiliate of theirs.

Audible books, music, television shows, and movies can also be purchased through iTunes (an excellent free program). I've tried all of the above and found them to work superbly. The downloading process is simple and easy. Amazon's Unbox, however, still needs some work before I can recommend them. I struggled with attempting to download a video for weeks before I finally asked them for a refund (which they quickly did).